
S NEB ATH-SC [TOOL LESSON QUARTERLY
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recognized and acknowledged in the service of the sanctuary or
the temple, then the place was desolate in the eyes of God, no
matter how beautiful the building or how elaborate the ritual
service.
3. Ancient Babylon and the Romans took away the typical
service by destroying the temple:) Modern Babylon set aside the
real service, or the mediation of Christ, by ignoring the work of
the great High Priest in the heavenly sanctuary, and by substi-
tuting another priesthood and another sacrifice in place of the true.
In neither case were real Christians prevented from communing
with God and receiving pardon for sin, but many were turned
away from the true worship of God to a false worship.
"It is only necessary to run over the books of the Old Testa-
ment, especially Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, to establish
the fact that the Jewish church, called by, the evangelists and the
apostles the
shadow
and the
figure
of the Christian society, can in
fact be the shadow and figure of the Catholic Church alone. In
the Jewish system there is one visible head, Moses, continuing to
live on in the sovereign pontiffs, the successive high priests, who
sat in his chair. This head presides over a complete hierarchy, to
which entire obedience is due under the severest penalties. These
priests teach with authority, explain the law, preserve the tradi-
tions, maintain the practise of morality, pray and offer sacrifices,—
in a word, govern the religious society. In these features, who
can not recognize Jesus Christ still living for the government of
the Catholic Church in Peter and his successors, the Roman pon-
tiffs presiding over the whole ecclesiastical hierarchy, over the
authority, the consecration and functions of the priests of the new
law? If Christ is come 'not to destroy the law, but to carry it
out to perfection,' all that is imperfect in the synagogue ought to
be perfect in the church : high priesthood, sacraments, sacrifices,
etc., etc. This perfection of the law we perceive throughout the
Catholic system.
'—"Catholic Doctrine as Defined by the Council
of Trent," 1869, page 62, Rev. A. Nampon, S. J.; Peter F. Cun-
ningham, Catholic bookseller, 216 South Third Street, Philadelphia.
''Few of us have ever grasped the full significance of sacerdo-
talism as a papal device. It puts the priest between the soul and
all else, even God, at every stage of development, in the most
ingenious and subtle system ever imagined. First of all, it controls
wedlock, coming between the man and the woman, to determine
whom each shall wed, in the interests of the church. Then when
offspring come, it puts the priest between the infant and its in-
grafting into the church in baptism; subsequently between the
child and the word of God, in catechetical instruction; between the
sinner and the absolution, in the confessional; between the com-